Fey’s moment of terror

last updated 8 January 2015

When disaster strikes, Tina Fey is no hero, she tells The New Yorker. She discovered this shameful fact during the anthrax postal attacks in October 2001, when she was a writer for Saturday Night Live. “I was sitting in my tiny dressing room at Rockefeller Plaza, looking for something funny to say about Afghanistan, the Taliban, Saddam Hussein. It was grim.” Then she saw a bulletin on TV: “Anthrax has been found at Rockefeller Plaza. CDC officials are investigating a suspicious package addressed to Tom Brokaw.’’

Her first instinct was to flee the NBC building as quickly as possible. “I put on my coat, walked downstairs past my friends and co-workers without saying anything. I walked right past the host for that week, sweet Drew Barrymore, without telling her what I heard. Then I walked home and waited to die.” Hours later, her boss, Lorne Michaels, tracked her down. “Lorne called and said gently, ‘We’re all here. You and Drew are the only ones who left. And Drew came back a few hours ago. We’re ordering dinner, if you want to come back in.’ It was the kindest way of saying, ‘You’re embarrassing yourself.’”